Andrew Taylor Still - Wikipedia

Andrew Taylor Still, MD, DO[1][2] (August 6, 1828 – December 12, 1917) was the founder of osteopathy and osteopathic medicine.[3] He was also a physician and surgeon,[4][5] author,[6][7] inventor and Kansas territorial and state legislator.[8] He was one of the founders of Baker University,[9] the oldest four-year college in the state of Kansas, and was the founder of the American School of Osteopathy (now A.T. Still University), the world's first osteopathic medical school, in Kirksville, Missouri.

Still was the son of a Methodist minister and physician. At an early age, Still decided to follow in his father's footsteps as a physician. After studying medicine and serving an apprenticeship under his father, he entered the Civil War as a hospital steward,[10] but later stated in his autobiography that he served as a "de facto surgeon". Despite biographical accounts of him earning an MD there appears to be no record that he was ever conferred one.[11]

At the time, the hospital stewards of the Army had many responsibilities, including maintaining hospital stores, furniture, and supplies for the sick.[12] Since pharmacists were not provided for the hospitals, the hospital stewards also filled prescriptions, and when the medical officers were not present, they took care of the patients.[12] Hospital Stewards were sometimes rewarded with promotions to surgeon or assistant surgeon.[13]

After the Civil War and following the death of his wife, three of his children, and an adopted child from spinal meningitis in 1864, Still concluded that the orthodox medical practices of his day were frequently ineffective and sometimes harmful. He devoted the next thirty years of his life to studying the human body and finding alternative ways to treat disease. During this period, he completed a short course in medicine at the new College of Physicians and Surgeons in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1870.[14]

Still adopted the ideas of spiritualism sometime around 1867, and it "held a prominent and lasting place in his thinking."[15]